'The Book Thief' tells the story of pre-World War II by Death

By Rob Lowman, Los Angeles Daily News

Posted:
11/08/2013 12:10:25 PM EST

Updated:
11/08/2013 12:10:39 PM EST

Successful young-adult novels more often then not involve vampires, magic, sci-fi or fantasy worlds. The beloved 2006 international best-seller “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak instead relies on the past — the not-so-distant, painful era of Nazi Germany.

The story is told by Death, who notices the young Liesel Meminger just before he takes her little brother.

“Curiosity got the better of me,” he says.

The girl, whose father was likely executed for being a communist and whose mother can no longer keep her, was on her way to foster care at the time. She is placed with a childless couple, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, in small town near Munich just before World War II.

They live on Himmelstrasse (Heaven Street). The name is ironic. The neighborhood is home to working-class German families, and Hans, a poor housepainter, keeps his dislike of the Nazis tamped down. (Himmelstrasse, which also translates to “Road to Heaven,” is also the name of the 100-yard path leading to the gas chambers at the Sobibor extermination camp where an estimated quarter of a million Jews were killed.)

In the film adaptation of “The Book Thief,” opening in limited release today, Hans is played by Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush, who in research for the part read a book about day-to-day life in the Third Reich.

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“It had all the big spikes, all the big events that happened at the time, but it also had street-level stuff, which is really useful,” Rush says. “That's really the dominant part of this film adaptation of Markus' book. Himmelstrasse becomes a character in the story as well.”

Much of the film — directed by Brian Percival (“Downton Abbey,” “North & South”) — was shot at Studio Babelsberg in Berlin, where production designer Simon Elliott built the Hubermanns' house on the fictional Himmelstrasse.

Anyone who has read “The Book Thief” knows the challenge of adapting the book was not simply in re-creating the setting, but in representing Zusak's vivid language and descriptions.

Rush had not read the book before reading the script by Michael Petroni (“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”), but says when he did, he found “the language so fantastic.”

But Rush says he knew it would be difficult to film “the thrilling but very distinctive literary devices” of the book.For example: “The sky was yellow, like burning newspaper,'' observes Death after a massive bombing of German civilians.

Zusak says he never expected “The Book Thief” to be turned into a film.

“You sign up, but everyone tells you it'll never get made,” says the 38-year-old Australian author. “So it's still a beautiful surprise that it has been made. I'm really grateful for the great respect it was shown.”

The book has sold more than eight million copies worldwide, has held a place on The New York Times best-seller list for almost seven years and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Zusak says “The Book Thief” was partially inspired by stories his parents — who had grown up in Europe during World War II — told him about seeing cities on fire and Jews being marched to concentration camps.

When Zusak first started writing the novel, it was intended to be a 100-page novella with the character of Death coming in at the end. Then it became a 250- page novel. And then he says it just got “bigger and bigger,” finally becoming a 550-page book.

“It had a life of its own, and it dragged me along behind it,” he says.

Zusak took it to his Australian publisher, who had handled his other young-adult books, and the publisher immediately took it to the arm of the company that handled literary fiction for adults.

“This is the only country in the world where it has a young-adult label to it,” he says, referring to the United States. Some countries, like England, have two different covers — one for the younger audience and one for the older readers.

The author knew that making Death a character was a difficult sell, but he says it made sense given the place and time of the story.

“So many people die in the story, yet it doesn't feel unhopeful,” he asserts.

Indeed, the young Liesel, who does not know how to read when she comes to the Hubermanns, is an inspirational figure, and Hans is a genuinely warm and gentle man. His wife (Emily Watson) plays the nag but clearly loves him. When Hans hides a young Jewish man, Max (newcomer Ben Schnetzer), whose father had saved his life in the First World War, he puts his family in danger. Yet everyone bears the burden with bravery and grace.

Zusak says he put no restrictions on how the book would be translated to the screen. “These are all creative people; you don't really want to put restrictions on them.”

Percival says the biggest challenge for the filmmakers in adapting the novel was their “duty to the writer. You wouldn't do the adaptation unless you really loved the material in the first place. You don't want to change it.” On the other hand, he acknowledges that trying to replicate the literary quality of the novel would take the audience out of natural elements of the story and “make it look like we were trying to construct something artificial.”

Casting the young Liesel was also crucial. After an extensive worldwide search, the filmmakers chose Sophie Nelisse after first seeing her in Canada's “Monsieur Lazhar,” a nominee for the 2012 foreign language Oscar. The French-speaking Canadian actress turned 13 during production, and Percival says the key was to find someone who could play 10 and then 16. “Sophie has this mixture of innocent vulnerability while having a really strong nature — a real feisty girl,” he notes.

The filmmaker, who describes himself as being raised around the docks of Liverpool and tending to identify with the “downstairs” people in “Downton Abbey,” says Rush was able to give Hans the complex and emotional layers needed for the role.

“Someone else could have taken the part and made it sentimental or melodramatic and killed the whole thing.”

Rush says his daughter had read “The Book Thief” when she was in high school, and it had made a really big impact on her.

“When she saw me reading the script, she asked me if I was going to play Death. Everyone's a casting director,” says the actor with a smile.

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